What The World Needs Now Is Some Good Old-Fashioned "5-Speed" Badges

You want to know what was great about the Seventies? Everything, from Michael McDonald joining the Doobie Brothers to the custom-van craze to the TV show Space:1999. Yet despite all of that awesomeness, it is true that automotive enthusiasts had a rough couple of years in the middle of the "Me Decade." There are still people out there who start shaking uncontrollably any time somebody says "thermal reactor" or "variable venturi carburetor." What can I say? The disco era was a rising tide that rocked the boats but didn't lift all of them.

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Here's one particular thing that was great about the Seventies: automotive badging and graphics. The lovely shadow "Carrera" decal that every douchebag in New England crookedly slaps on the doors of his pre-owned '07 Porsche 911 C4 Tiptronic? Straight outta the Seventies, as was the hugely evocative "turbo" script badge that practically defined cool when you saw it on the decklid of a wide-body 930. Saab had a turbo badge that was almost as awesome. What about the Mustang II King Cobra? Or, and you knew this was coming, the "screaming chicken" on the hood of the '77 Trans Am?

The Japanese got into the act as well—I'm thinking of all the great stripes on the early minitrucks, whether they were sold as captive imports or under their original brands—but when I think about Japanese cars in the Seventies, I'll always think about the little badge on the back of the early Accord hatchbacks. It was under the right taillight, about three inches long, and it said, simply, "5speed".

Honda wasn't the only automaker to have a "5speed" badge on the back of their cars. They weren't even the only Japanese manufacturer to have a red "5" and the word "speed" immediately afterwards—Mazda did for sure, and I think Nissan might have had it on some early Z-cars for the home market—but the neat thing about the Honda "5speed" badge was that it was everywhere. And there was a simple reason for that: in an era where a fair number of domestic cars and truck still came with the infamous "three on the tree" column-shift manual, the Accord had five-on-the-floor as standard equipment.

Not everybody thought the "5speed" badge was cool, the same way not everybody saw the reasoning behind putting "Fuel injection" or "Lambda Sond" on the trunk or grille of a car. I can remember my father saying, "What do I care if that (expletive deleted, possibly referring to the automobile, the driver, or some combination thereof) has a 5-speed transmission?" But as one of my favorite bloggers, "The Last Psychiatrist" always used to say, "If you're watching it… it's for you."

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The purpose of the 5speed badge wasn't to brag about the owner's choice, although some owners probably liked having it on there. The purpose was to let everybody know that it was no trouble to get a five-cog manual transmission in a Honda. Remember that the Corvette came with no better than a four-on-the-floor until the electric overdrive 4+3 of 1984. Heck, that super-cool Porsche 930 Turbo was also just a four-speed back then, too. You can bet your Asperger's that a lot of people saw that badge on the back of their neighbor's new Accord (or Civic, in some cases) and it set them to thinking about getting a five-speed Honda of their very own. The rest, of course, is history.

The practice of carpet-bombing a car with various and sundry badges reached an all-time high (or low) in the early Eighties with cars like the Chevrolet Celebrity Eurosport. After that everybody but the Germans backed wayyyy off. I'm not personally aware of a new car for sale in America right now that has any transmission-related external labeling on it, although I'm sure one of my readers will come up with an exception that proves the general rule. Even Porsche, whose minimalist and uber-cool "turbo" or "911SC" badges have given way to a veritable projectile-vomiting of chrome-colored plastic all over its once-sacred decklids, has managed to restrain itself from putting "PDK" at the end of its "PORSCHE 911 CARRERA 4S TARGA" alphabet soup.

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Our friends at Car and Driver have had a "Save The Manuals" campaign. It's very admirable, although judging by transmission trends over the last half-decade or so it's been somewhat less effective than, say, those fellows who briefly stood in front of the Tiananmen Square tanks. Something a little more Action Directe is required, methinks, and that's where that Seventies philosophy of testimony-via-trunk-badge could come in handy.

My Accord V6 Coupe should have a "6speed" badge to go right where the "5speed" one used to on the '77 models. Not because I'm proud of myself for buying a manual-transmission family car, although I am, kinda, just a little; rather, because I don't think most people know that you can still get a third pedal in an Accord. The same is true for any Porsches whose owners have the moral fortitude to shift for themselves; they can have a "6speed" or, in some cases, a"7speed" badge, as can stick-rowing Corvette owners.

If enough carmakers adopted this practice, I think they'd see sales of manual transmissions increase. Once people are reminded that the dreaded PRNDL disease isn't absolutely unavoidable elsewhere, some of them will make the choice to choose their gears, thus increasing the number of "6speed" badges, thus increasing awareness, and so on, and so forth. We constantly hear excuses for why supposedly enthusiast-oriented manufacturers are abandoning the manual, and in most cases the excuses are sales-volume-centric. Remove those excuses, and who knows? We might see a stick-shift RWD Huracan, which would be the greatest thing possible, even greater than the song "Aja" on the album Aja.

We can't have the Seventies back. We might not even want the Seventies back. Computers were pretty terrible back then, you know. I was there, and I can vouch for that fact. But a little bragging-via-badging wouldn't go amiss in 2017, and it might just help us keep the self-shifting dream alive a little bit longer. As Michael McDonald sang, "They say it's a hopeless fight / well, I say I gotta try."